Travel Behavior and Employment Decentralization

This report addresses sprawl and is the continuation of an earlier study to assess the importance of expressways in the urban and economic development of the Chicago area. It also examines aspects of the quality of life such as home ownership rates and how much time Chicago-area residents spend traveling.

The report concludes that:

The disproportionate increases in urban-land consumption relative to population growth is a trend that will decrease because of changing demographics and home ownership rates with recent data showing that the growth in land consumption will soon be equal to population growth.

Sprawl is closely associated with increasing home ownership rates and the Chicago area has high and increasing home ownership rates relative to other metropolitan areas in its size class, especially New York and Los Angeles.

Residents of low- and moderate-density suburbs do not spend more time on daily travel than residents of the city of Chicago.

Employment has decentralized in several phases with manufacturing moving first seeking large parcels of land followed by retailing responding to population redistribution and most recently by the service sector.

Firms in the Chicago area have moved closer to expressway interchanges and consider automobile access and particularly parking to be very important in selecting a site.

Please click on the link below to download the complete “Travel Behavior and Employment Decentralization” report.